Untold and Unfinished
by Kaiorven
Summary: There are a myriad of ways a tale can be halted before its conception, for if a story's birth is merely a happy accident, then its miscarriage may be caused by a single mistake. Oneshot series.
1. Interruptions

Really, Fakir should have expected these things by now. The Prince, after all, had spent an eon wandering outside the town. It was only natural he'd start wandering once in a while, in spite of all of Fakir's efforts to the contrary.

Still, a lake, of all places? The reeds brushed wet against his legs, and a tree dripped on his head.

He scowled.

And just because it had happened so many times before didn't mean he was used to this, goddammit. Fakir face palmed. Not only was Mytho missing pants, he was also missing a shirt. Or any clothing of any persuasion, really.

"Hey! Stop dancing in the middle of nowhere. I booked you into dance classes for a reason, alright?"

If Mytho had any feelings whatsoever, he would have been surprised. As it was, he just stopped to face Fakir, and tilted his head quizzically.

Fakir seized Mytho's wrist, pale against his. "Let's go," he said.

On the other side of the lake, a duck bobbing in the water shook her head rapidly, enchantment broken, her fascination with the Prince already fading. Who was that rude human with him anyway?

That night, the duck called Duck dreamt of sad, lonely eyes of gold beneath hair of snow. When she awoke, she would remember nothing at all.

And in a place far away yet not very far at all, the gears of the story remained still and unmoving; and an old man frowned between their rusted, immobile teeth.


	2. Commercialisation

Take a guess at what other anime I reference at the end. It's pretty obvious if you've watched it.

* * *

"Look," said his agent, Edmund Schreiber, "I really like this work. I really do. The Prince and the Raven is, I believe, your strongest work yet."

Herr Drosselmeyer raised an eyebrow, running his fingers through his dark green hair. "I'm feeling a but coming on here..."

"...but it's not right for the current market," Schreiber finished, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

Honestly, the other man looked rather unfortunate, violet haired and bespectacled. If he was lucky, all of the descendants of his damn agent would hear those same unfortunate looks.

But back to business.

"I've changed this story so many times!" snarled the author. "First I wrote in Kraehe because you argued the Raven wasn't an active enough antagonist, and I even cut the whole Lohengrin/Tutu/Siegfried triangle at your behest, which means she's left with only one bloody line in the whole story!"

Drosselmeyer then realised he had stood, and was panting, his fists slammed on the desk.

"If you want to be paid, the reader is king," said Schreiber mercilessly. "The sales of the Ghost Knight and his Lover are starting to drain away. You haven't published a new book in five years."

Drosselmeyer wanted to curse him. It would be so easy to leave the other man tragically dead. Or just walk away from the Schreiber Literary Agency, if he wanted to be generous.

"Whose fault do you think that is?" said Drosselmeyer, pointedly.

Schreiber ignored him. "Are there any other proposals you have? Something new, something fresh?"

This time, Drosselmeyer would quit. He really would. What did it matter if no reader ever read the stories he had worked so hard on? They came true, at least some of the time. Wasn't that enough? He'd go home, and write without care, he'd finish The Prince and the Raven the way it was meant to be finished, and publish his manuscript by hand if need be.

Schreiber eyed him shrewdly. "Or something tragic, perhaps?"

No. No. He would not fall for this again. He would not pitch something else which would be inevitably shot down.

But his mouth betrayed him. "I was thinking... magical girl deconstruction."

Schreiber sneered – he had the perfect sneer which never failed to make Drosselmeyer's blood pressure rise ten points. "Because the magical girl subversion that Tutu represented wasn't enough genre butchery in a day?"

"The magical girls turn into the very beings they're trying to defeat," said Drosselmeyer, in spite of himself. Why was he still here? Why hadn't he left yet?

"The old medieval settings and contemporary fantasy are utterly overdone," said Schreiber, unimpressed, inspecting his nails. "The market is glutted with them. Try again."

"It's futuristic, actually," said Drosselmeyer.

"So what differentiates this from all the other works out there?" asked Schreiber.

And goddamn if Drosselmeyer didn't feel glee creeping into his face and twisting it into a smile. "It's released as a two-parter, with a happy ending," he began.

"Not tragedy? I didn't realise you had it in you," said Schreiber.

"Ah, but the thing is, after everything is wrapped up perfectly and neatly and happily," Drosselmeyer looked out the window. The last of the brilliant sunset was fading into twilight. "The third book in the trilogy would flip the ending into a complete tragedy."

Schreiber looked at him for a long time.

Drosselmeyer fidgeted.

"You have three months to give me a completed draft," said the other man finally. "With luck, this just might make it."

Drosselmeyer blinked. "But what about 'The Prince and the Raven'?"

"Forget about it," said Schreiber, standing to close his briefcase. "You have bigger fish to fry."


	3. Rescue

Henrik panted as ran home, his stride staggered with exhaustion. In the midst of the fighting, he had nearly missed the flock of crows swarmed around his streets and undoubtedly over his roofs.

And even though he had noticed it, he would have ignored it, his house being securely bolted and every shutter sealed tight. He had to, for his wife Elise had fled from Gold-Krone, leaving both him and his child behind for the safety of the hills.

And he? He had chosen to fight with his townsfolk, trusting to chance and metal locks his daughter's safety.

_We're both terrible parents,_ he thought miserably.

His fears were affirmed when the single glass window at the upstairs bathroom was shattered. Panic rising, he fumbled the keys and threw open the doors. He heard screeching from within.

"Mummy!" He heard the cry of his child, his daughter, his girl. "Mummy!"

He ran upstairs. The crows had gathered around her, cawing, beating their wings, clawing at the cradle which held her. He ran, adrenaline surging, like remnants of the fight outside and the smell of blood and oh god, oh god the sounds... "Claire!"

He slashed. A wing, lopped off, thumped onto the bed. _Down feathers for the pillows_, he thought, a little hysterically. Another slash caught the a different crow on the breast. Seeing two of their number dead, they scattered.

"I'm sorry," he lifted her into his arms. "I'm not – I won't leave you again. I won't. I promise." He cradled her, overwhelmed by guilt and relief.

"Mummy?" She asked again.

"Mummy's gone," he said quietly, smoothing her dark curls of hair. "But it –" he choked down a sob. "It's okay. Daddy's here."

Claire squirmed in this arms – was his grip too tight? – and looked up at him with soft doe eyes. "Mummy?"

"Daddy," he said.

She appeared to give it some thought. "Daddy," she repeated.

Claire was not a girl that all admired or envied; nor did she dance, except at festivals. And while she married a brilliant and ambitious man, she most assuredly did not marry a Prince.

Claire never needed to touch glory, nor to transcend her place in the world. She never needed to save a man with a words of love, nor to sacrifice herself for the one she did love. She was not forged on the crucible of despair and suffering, nor was she transmuted by a selflessness which spanned death itself.

But then again, neither had she ever called a Raven father; and her eyes, untainted, remained a soft, steady brown.

But stories have a way of calling to each other, and so it was that when her first child had born –

"Are you sure?" Her husband, a literary critic, had raised an eyebrow. "Surely you do not want such a plain name for the girl," he said. "Daphne, perhaps. Or Orphelia."

"We can't all have such names as Autor," she had jabbed back at him, adopting his supercilious and condescending tone. "I have already decided. Her name shall be Rue, and so mote it be."


End file.
